


The Sun Always Sets (On Southside)

by veronicassadboi



Series: That's My Love (Dying for you) [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Dark!Jughead, Dark!Veronica, F/M, a gift for a favourite, and my classic runaway to new york, angsty as per usual, heart tearing love, the normal love is pain trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 00:56:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21027608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veronicassadboi/pseuds/veronicassadboi
Summary: He wonders why she's so cold, why everything hurts. Why his soul fucking sings, aches, begs for her. Why they shouldn’t be together, why Southside keeps him in the bad, why he turned his back on his brother and took her with him. Why he betrayed Betty. Why Veronica was the only thing that makes sense in his fucked up world. Why Veronica Lodge chose him. Why they were ever on the same frequency. He wonders why.But then he remembers how they got here in the first place.





	The Sun Always Sets (On Southside)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bothromeoandjuliet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bothromeoandjuliet/gifts).

> A gift for @kindnessinpain2000/bothromeoandjuliet. I may have sparked a flicker of inspiration in you, but you have lit up flames in me, for this, I thank you with a Jughead with a heart of spilling darkness and a Veronica whose pride refuses to let up

_ **The Sun Always Sets (On Southside)** _

* * *

She got to feel him today. Really feel him. He's tense; his eyes are red-webbed bloodshot. He doesn't show her his hands, he won't let her run her thumbs over what must be battered-bruised knuckles. He was hooded-dark lids and bite-swollen lips.

_ But he’s here, with me, _ she thinks. He melt-shivers under her hands. He was dotted kisses. He was…

He just _ was _.

"Jug?" she asks, dark rimmed eyes with long lashes, purple lips murmuring against him. 

"Shush, Princess, let me feel the sun."

So they lay in the sun. But it's setting and it's barely shining through the covered window of her bedroom while they’re on the carpeted floor. Veronica let’s their silence drown them like Sweetwater. They forget everything for a moment. They forget Southside. She lets them forget in the summer. 

Leaving for New York was the promise they made that they forgot.

* * *

She got to see him today. But she doesn’t think he saw _ her _. All he saw was the photo of his family, in a glass-cracked frame with unused-house-not-a-home dust on it. He rubbed the dust off with his thumb, he rubbed his thumb off on the leather of his jacket. The same thing that separated his family in the first place. 

The sound of his breathing was staggered-cracked just like the glass of the photo. But the photo was screaming-calling to her because right down the middle where he held his sister's hand in the photo was the deepest heart-crack of them all. The glass spoke in volumes, it spoke louder than him. His mom and sister in Toledo.

And his dad in Southside.

And him, here in Riverdale.

_With_ _me_, Veronica prays.

"Are you okay?" She whispers against his shoulder.

He snigger-shrugs, he kiss-murmurs. "I'm okay, Princess, I'm okay, I'm okay…"

He repeats his prayer. He convinces himself. He's _telling_ himself.

_ But I'm not okay, _she feels when his phone lights up, Southside beckoning him. A reminder they couldn’t leave.

* * *

She got him back today. Her mom was in New York soaking in mimosas and he was soaking in _her_. Leather was lying on the floor and she tasted his skin all summer-burnt and red-tight skin. His cheekbones were flushed and so were hers. They matched. They were one.

"You're the relief of breathing," Jughead laughs at her. "You're the feeling you get when your chest isn't tight anymore."

"I don't know what that feels like...," she laughs back.

He smiles silently. "I'm glad for it."

"You know you’ve got a home in me, right," she asks him. Trying to remind herself that’s all they need.

He smooths his hands up her thigh, in between, loud-snapping the lace against her skin, running his finger along as if it were dancing. "My home is where you are…"

"Where you are is my home," she promises him.

Veronica looks to Jughead’s eyes but his eyes are staring at her lips. She bites her and he bites his. He moves to her, he bites hers, and she groans on him. "You kill me, you know," he tells her.

"I know."

"Veronica..." he sighs and it echo-chills her to the core. "Do you like Riverdale?"

Riverdale was her home. Small towns come with the small minds that run it, she knows, But it was the epitome of all she needed to be; pretty, perfect, _ peace._ "I don't mind it."

"Riverdale is dying," he tells her. "Riverdale is crumbling and we're in it, do you think we should run?"

She wants to laugh, to roll her eyes and tell him he's stupid.

But she doesn’t.

Because he's dead serious. She can tell with the deep-dark in his eyes.

“We promised New York.”

“_I_ promised _you_ New York.”

Fear keeps them here. She knows it. But Sweetwater holds them hostage and whispers to her that they’ll never fit in together. 

* * *

She got to see the happy in him today. He spun her around the trailer, he draped his leathers on her, tilted her back and kissed her neck. "You're my everything."

Sweat was building on his brow, his cigarette bobbed up and down and ash flew in the air to the ground. "I love you, Jughead Jones," she whispers as she spins.

He was barefoot from the forest, tank top tucked into ripped jeans, summer-in-the-sun tanned. He turns up his bitten-dry lips and grins. "When have I ever not loved you, Princess? You tell me."

Veronica pretends to think as they keep on with the music. "I don't know."

"In a world where you don't exist – actually, no, that's not true."

"Why not?" she asks with lips pressed to lips.

"Only in a world where _ I _ don't exist. Because if I was in a lifetime where you didn't exist, I would still love the idea of you."

"You're all pretty words," she tells him, swinging. "Pretty words and a pretty mind."

"Dark and dull throbbing," he replies instead.

She almost stops the swinging.

Veronica grabs both his hands and swings him around instead, he curtseys, she laughs with her head thrown back and tears in her eyes. "I'll stay here with you, if you want me to?" she asks.

But they learn the hard way that they don't talk about her leaving. They celebrate on the floor of the trailer and she feels his hands holding onto hers. The swinging stops and so does the music. New York is the city they don’t talk about, He leaves kiss marks on her skin that tell her he never wants her to leave. 

They were supposed to leave _ together._

* * *

She got to smell him today. He smells like rust and menthol cigarettes. She sniggers about his addiction, the way he flicks ash in the air and blows smoke in a cloud that he follows with his eyes. But he's still summer-light and forest floors too.

Rust-Love fills her nose, he fills her lungs. He was silent tonight but Jughead doesn't back down from a promise. _ And he promised to be here with me. _

"Love, love, love," he murmurs in her ear. "Princess."

Love's speaking to her and she listens with her hands on his skin and his taste on her tongue. She’s trying to talk back but Love is distracting her as he pulls her onto the bed, making her warm; making her _ alive _.

Veronica sucks in more rusty air through her teeth as he pushes heavier down on her. She gives it back pushing more of her onto him. Jughead abides and he gives her more. _ Giving me more than more. All of him more_, she knows. With his heart in her grip and his mind in her mind. .

He drops his head onto her shoulder. He's whisper-speaking, "I missed you today."

"I miss you too." Not past tense.

Jughead groans lowly and moves against her slowly. He pauses stiffly and pulls off his jeans, he moves her shorts down her legs as he kisses ankles, loving her calves.

Veronica moves for him, arching and bending and spreading. Curving closer to him, pulling him closer to her. She’s ignited and on fire, shaking-ready. Held under the weight of undeniable, unwavering love and Love shifts, gripping onto her thigh to keep it steady but Veronica reads the irony because Jughead’s chest is rising and falling quick-sharp, his eyes on all of her, his lip between his teeth turning strain-white.

Eventually, Veronica feels the pulse in her temple, feels the tightening of her free hand in the sheet. The sound of the straining wooden headboard is ringing in her ear. She’s letting go, shaking so quickly in time with her breathing. She watches her chest rise and fall with his so fast. She comes around him, slick of the wet between them.

Veronica watched Jughead ride it until his jaw falls slack and her own smile playing on her lips and tongue just as slick on his neck.

All she smells now is satisfaction in this room.

* * *

He got to taste Summer today. The Summer smells so much like chlorine and burning tar. Each sticky step melts his Docs to the pavement when they make the walk around town with the flicker-filled Veronica who bounces with every approaching step that mismatches his. The oddball and the Vixen.

The Southside was becoming as much her home as it was his welcomed one. Sometimes she stared at the jacket when he wore it. That reminder that they were further from New York than they cared to be. Sometimes he watched her smooth it over her bare skin that was decorated with lace from top to bottom, bare feet on the lino of the trailer that they were supposed to leave behind, but naturally, they didn't.

When Veronica went over, the night was dark and didn't feel like the night at all, it was the smell of sweat and leather and pine that moved through the trailer, it was the feeling of sweat on his forehead and damp tank tops and cinnamon scented shampoo and a hell of a lot of chlorine that burned her nose. She had opened the door of the trailer somewhat gently and closed the door with her hand cradling the door handle but she was all summer-storm thunders and afternoon lightening. It was the echo of her light steps intertwined with the heavy-deep sighs as she padded through that caught his attention. The summer breeze moving through lifted the smell of her summer-burned skin and coconut moisturiser that seemed unnatural on her because she was trade-mark cinnamon and dark purple lips, she was not summertime coconut. Summertime coconut didn't match the smell of his menthol cigarettes and mint-fresh gum.

Jughead was sitting on the ledge of the window of the trailer with Veronica’s leg dangling down, kicking the leg of the table and the window was open wide, his head in his hands and the discarded packet of menthols resting by him. The Serpents seemed to have a never ending stash of a lot of things, bags of weed, bags of cash, bottles of Jack and cartons of cigarettes, they often leaked into La Bonne Nuit.

They say that smoking is a dirty habit; but that was exactly what it was now. A habit. A brief get-away that keeps Jughead’s mind clear and keeps him busy. Keeps his hands occupied and makes him feel a little good so he tells Veronica.

Some of the ash flicks into the trailer and rolls down his legs, she doesn't miss it. She eyes the ash that runs down his leg and onto the ground. He keeps a smile to himself when he watches her eyes turn beady and her hands find their way to her hips.

She looks like summer-storms and the air she's giving off feels like it too. Like crashing and rolling, like spikes and daggers. Veronica doesn’t know if anyone else sees it but his eyes are deeper than Sweetwater River itself. His skin is burned like crimson.

There's crimson in the sky tonight, it was painted blue and purple and pink and crimson like his skin; twilight screamed at her right now as Jughead took a drag of his cigarette and she fingered the empty packet of menthols on the table. "Where were you today?" Veronica asks.

Jughead has a nervous laugh, chucking his cigarette butt out the window with the rest of the collective, he swings his leg over so he’s sitting on the ledge of the window looking at Veronica and smiling at her. "Where were you?" he counteracts. 

She bites her lip and spins on the balls of her feet and back again, moving through his world to meet him at the ledge, she leans against his knees and wraps her arms around his neck, burying herself in the crook, her lips warming him up as they speak against him, she tries to read him through his guard. “Swimming with Sweets and TT, they wanted to come and get you but I figured you might want a break from them."

"You figured correctly," He mutters against her own neck, tasting all of summer and cinnamon. "You keep getting in my head and reading it."

"Where have you been?" she asks again.

"Gone."

Veronica groans and pulls tighter on his neck, trying to ignore the feeling of his being completely gone from her. “Where have you been?"

“Southside."

"Gone Southside, huh?" she says, trying to block out the malice in her voice, he tries to only hear light and summertime. But he’s not good at blocking out Veronica. Never has been and she knows it.

She pulls away gently from him but he pulls her back. Kissing the inside of her arms as they move distantly from him. Dots on the insides of her wrists and the crimson of her chest by the swell of her breasts. He kisses lightly on her heart and his hands find their home on her hips where they dip and pool. “I have to go sometimes or I’ll never leave your side…”

Veronica tip toes to meet Jughead’s eyes with her own she notices his deep blue is more like a deeper black, a yearning, burning black. Her hands have a slight trembling grip on his shoulders while she uses him for balance. "You're being vague."

She can feel the summer on his cheeks because they're reddening and burning but she knows that maybe her questioning glare pressures him. "V…” he mutters.

"Jughead. I miss you," she says, leaning her head on his shoulder.

"I miss you too, Princess."

She moves away, sun light in the dark night moving with her and she goes to sit on the floor in the sitting area in front of the fan that makes the obnoxious noises and pretends to be giving relief during the summer heat. She's criss crossed legs and leaning back on the palms of her hands, letting the breeze pick her. Jughead discards his next cigarette butt to the collective and moves to the sitting room, criss crossing his own legs in front of her – his knees to hers.

She sits up and puts her hands on her knees – her eyes to his, but this time, he leans forward to take both her hands in his own, moving his hands higher to run his thumbs over her wrists, strumming her pulse. Veronica sighs against his touch, she bites her lip as if she's trying to remember every single time he’s done this to her and she'd be thinking of ten million different times he was so many soft touches when he was here with her. Her soul eases. The feeling of impending doom was nearer. Her heart calls his name.

"How's things on the Northside?" he asks her, “where the sun is always sunny and the Pep is a little more Peppy!”

She laughs, belly shaking, head throwing. "Where do I start?"

"Start by just telling me," he replies.

She distracts him with tales of Fangs and Sweetpea in the summer. How Archie talks to her again and Pop’s finally invested in an airconditioner that is the greatest thing she’s ever seen. 

"I can't lose you," he says in a hurry.

Veronica’s soul clenches, struggling to hide the shock evident on her face. She moves closer, leaning on his knees. “You won’t.” 

The relief he felt was obvious to her. She feels for him, every fibre of her being loved him. She feels for him. A sadness. Veronica pushes him down onto the floor, she thinks she's moved him softly but his head bangs on the floor and her nails are digging into his skin. "Good,” he replies.

"I'm here. With you."

"Are you?" Jughead asks her. "I want you with me all the time."

"I'm with you all the time."

"In my mind, you're with me all the time," he mumbles

She frowns, she's not happy. "This is all temporary."

"Until we can skip?"

"Until we've finished school and we can skip."

* * *

Jughead stares at the time on the alarm clock as it beeps to wake him up. He doesn't switch it off, he doesn't have the energy to hit snooze. He thinks briefly on the time and he wonders what Veronica is doing at this exact moment. If his thoughts didn't betray him, then the smell of her in his sheets did. He woke up with her smell mixed with _ his _ smell and he knows he's fucking lying to himself when he tries to make out that he's unsure of how many days it's been since he last saw her fake smile.

_ Twenty-Three. _

She pops up everywhere. In the taste of shakes at Pop's. Shaky tears on his face, the writing she left on his kitchen table that he hasn't been able to move. In the text messages he reads before he forces himself to sleep at least two hours at night. He's still learning how to perfect that, though. Because sometimes it's a messy forty-five minutes just before school. Or it's a solid sixteen hours and he's missed the whole fucking day. At the moment, there's no in between.

She's the marrow in the bones of his fucked up days.

Veronica Lodge is the marrow in _ his _ very bones.

Veronica Lodge _ is him _.

Jughead punches a pillow as the alarm keeps going. He screams into the same one. He realises it smells like her, so he clings on a little tighter.

And then he feels the ache in his jaw, the pulsing of blood in his split lip and then he remembers how he got here in the first place.

* * *

"You hate me, don't you?" Jughead asks his best friend.

Toni Topaz wasn't a liar. And Jughead knows that Toni Topaz has a level of loyalty that the Southside wouldn't be able to rival. Toni Topaz also had a weird way of saying exactly what was on her mind even if maybe, Jughead thinks, she shouldn't. Jughead also wonders if he can count how many times Toni opens her mouth in an attempt to make up some lie, but, yet again, Toni Topaz is not a liar and it almost irritates Jughead that his best friend is torturing him in this way. "I don't hate you, Jug."

Jughead sniggers, kicks his boots on the lino floor and stops himself from rolling his eyes. "You hate me."

"Veronica still loves you she just..."

"Doesn't love what I've become."

Toni scrambles for words again. Jughead can tell. She’s frantic and stumbling over her own tongue. She grabs Jughead by the collar and shakes him out, but Jughead can just feel boiling blood. "This stupid loyalty to Southside is what we hate, but we love _ you, _ Jughead," Toni takes a steadying breath. "V loves you; I miss you, Jug."

Jughead wishes they were sixteen again. Way back when. When FP and Fred were best buds and he and Archie were back up in the treehouse. Or even not that long ago, when he was crashing on the Andrews floor and the biggest issue was Archie burning pizza.

But they're not. Archie is a Northern Suburban Knight in Shining Armour and Jughead is a Southside Serpent earning new fangs while cycling with the training wheels still on. Toni isn’t candid snapshots in the booths at Pop’s or late night Goonies dates with food spread on the floor and Cheryl in her arms anymore.

Hearing Veronica’s name made the arteries connected to his heart harden and stop pulsing, the blood was coagulating, stiffening.

Toni’s words only made him feel half the amount better, because _ 'I-miss-you's' _ from Toni Topaz were dished out as often as ' _ hellos' _, Jughead doesn't think it as a dig at his best friend, he likes to think of it as Toni just has a big heart.

But he sees his best friend watching the leather jacket on his shoulders and then he remembers how he got here in the first place.

Jughead thinks quickly on everything that he has control over.

He has freedom and the trailer is his.

He can ride out at any time, there's no limit to where he can go.

And then his chest feels tight, and his breathing is too shallow.

He can't control his repetitive reading of Veronica’s last texts.

Or the way he thinks the only way his heart is still beating is because Veronica Lodge is still on his mind.

But the trailer is his, the bike is his, though not something he had initially wanted, Hotdog was his. And so were the bad thoughts, the mess of hair on his head, the dark rings under his eyes, the two hours sleep, the love he holds for Veronica Lodge, the cigarettes he all of a sudden acquired and the pills Sweetpea insists he'll like.

They're all his.

* * *

Toni has a body that is out of this world. Toni has a mouth with lips that look like they need biting. She has hair you can hold on to. Toni has words that make guys drop to their knees, Jughead knows, because Fangs told him.

She gives him that taste of Southside without the pain. And when there is pain involved, Toni makes a good makeshift nurse. She's seen things before that he's only just learning about and she makes a good teacher. But Veronica taught him every dark, deep corner of his soul. He feels bile at the back of his throat when he thinks of Veronica and Toni in the same go. But things are complicated and no amount of digging his snake pit further into Southside was going to change that.

He couldn't be further from the North than he is right now.

Even while sitting in the Blue and Gold with dust plumes glittering in afternoon sun, Toni is making a passionate speech about showing the true identity of Southside to Riverdale. And as much as taking photos of the Football team and the Drama class that just so happens to have an uncountable amount of students with nose rings and belt buckles with studs on them, he can't help but think that Toni would have a better chance at portraying Southside for what it was. A festering wound that is hard to cover up.

"You've got some dark rings under your eyes, Forsythe," she says with a smirk. "You been up all night or something?"

Jughead reads the bite of her lip and the wink of her right eye. He reads it dirty but he shrugs in reply. "Hmm," he says.

Toni has made him feel better in ways that maybe she shouldn’t have, but she’s covering up wounds too. They both hold regrets that maybe they shouldn’t. They have an understanding, but maybe they shouldn’t. 

There were a lot of things that have happened that maybe they shouldn’t have.

Toni slinks behind his chair, pats his shoulder, ruffles his hair. "Don't worry, Juggie, if you love each other, you'll find your way back."

Do marrow and blood every actually touch? He's not sure.

He flickers briefly between thinking about how he and Veronica would find their way back and believing that they had never actually ever fucking lost each other.

He flickers between Toni's lips and Veronica’s soul.

He flickers between loving Veronica and then he remembers how he got here in the first place.

* * *

Veronica is working at Pop's alone. He knows by the way her hair is a little lopsided with her pen tangled in it that maybe she didn't have intentions of working tonight but she made the effort anyways. He also knows how soft her hair feels and how hurt she must be right now.

Out of selfishness for his own battered feelings, he doesn't approach her. Or he might tell her how much he needs her. How he can't _ live _ without her.

But he's at risk of looking like an idiot and his ego can't take another blow.

Her shoulders slump, he watches her hand smooth over the counter and then over her hair, she cranes her neck a little; she must be looking at the mass of dishes left to wipe.

He doesn't order, he walks out hungry. He kicks his bike before getting back on it.

And then he remembers how he got here in the first place.

* * *

It's sick, because every punch from _ Gareth-the-Ghoulie _ sounds like Veronica’s name against his skin.

He feels Gareth's knuckles sing against the right side of his jaw, his teeth grate against each other but he manages a swing too, weak with his left hand side. _ Veronica _, it ghosts.

Somehow, Gareth gets ahold of the scruff of his neck and he's trying to tackle Jughead down, but Jug is younger, faster, he spins out, spits blood on the floor and swings his right, stronger hand. _ Veronica _, it sings against Gareth's nose.

Gareth laughs manically, "Yeah, you little Serpents tougher than you look, huh?"

Jughead thinks ironically, that Gareth isn't right because if only he knew of the girl that has him crippled most of the time. But he shouldn't be thinking of her when he gets landed a blow to the temple.

He's almost out cold when he hears Sweetpea call his name.

* * *

"V?" Jughead asks the buzzing in his ears, it surely has to be her.

But then he realises it's not because he remembers how he got here in the first place.

Jughead feels exposed and he tries to sit up quickly when he sees her, but he also wonders if maybe he shouldn't bother. He has to be dead to be seeing Veronica Lodge sitting on the end of his bed.

Once upon a time it was sneaking through bedroom windows. Then crashing out on the overused sofa in the trailer.

Then it was shouting, hateful words. Soft tender kisses in the rain. Wiping tears away in the booth at Pop's. Making himself physically fucking sick because love shouldn't be this hard, right? Veronica had promised him that their loves was unshakeable, unmovable, limitless.

She had promised Jughead that their love was as easy as breathing, at what point of their love did Veronica become a liar? He wonders.

Now, she was so close that he could smell her perfume, but he could also make out the tracks and paths of her tears thanks to black mascara. And as much as Jughead wanted to look away, he was a man starved. He drinks her in, he soaks up her sun, he wants to feel pain in his palms when she's in his hands. But the way she drips disgust in him hurts him more than it hurts her.

"Why are you doing this, Jughead?" she asks, humming his name in prayer. .

He thinks of something stupid that might soften his words. But he can't find anything the fits well enough. "It's Southside..."

"Don't!" she hisses. "Don't tell me that! Don't lie to me!" she shakes the room, she slams a fist down on the same pillow he does every night. "Don't do this Jughead," her tears fly. "This is crazy! It's dangerous."

He thinks his love for her is the only dangerous thing around here.

He reaches with a shaky, beat up hand and wipes her tears and she sinks into his hand, closing her eyes. "I love you, Princess. I'd do anything for you. And if that means keeping on the Southside to keep them from you, then so be it."

"Run away with me. Please," she begs. "I'm serious."

She slides into the bed with him, shaking with cold even if it's warm outside.

He wonders why she's so cold, why everything hurts. Why his soul fucking sings, aches, begs for her. Why they shouldn’t be together, why Southside keeps him in the bad, why he turned his back on his brother and took her with him. Why he betrayed Betty. Why Veronica was the only thing that makes sense in his fucked up world. Why Veronica Lodge chose him. Why they were ever on the same frequency. He wonders _ why _. 

But then he remembers how they got here in the first place.

He can't keep away from her. But then, he never could. He dreams of Springtime when he was a kid riding bikes with Archie. And he misses that too. The old Archie. The one who wasn't so scared. The one that was funny. But Jughead remembers, they were all funny back then.

He laughs lightly about Betty and how way back when, she used to be a pigtail kind of girl and not much has changed, only that she's now a single ponytail kind of woman. And she never did hate him for what he became. California treats her so well, she still keeps in touch. 

For some reason, Veronica let him into the Pembroke. Jughead clung onto her, kissed her a million times after paying the price of Southside, he made it up to her with her thighs around his head and her nails in his hair. He laughed against the insides of her ankles and soft kisses on her wrist and for once, Southside was left on the floor next to her buzzing television.

Jughead lies in Veronica’s arms with her fingers still playing with a curl at the front of his face. "I want to go,V," he tells her honestly. "I want you and I to go, let's go, get out of here."

It was crazy but Jughead knew it was doable. He had arranged everything, he had money, a car. He wanted to skip, get out of here. Veronica stops, tilts Jughead's head with her hands and gives him a serious look while frowning. "Are you serious?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?" he challenges.

She inhales sharply. "Leave all this mess behind?"

He nods. He nods so hard, he feels like he looks stupid but he was serious and if he could, he would leave now. "You and me, Princess, what do you say?"

She smiles. She kisses him a million times. He smiles against her collarbone and then he remembers how he got here in the first place.

* * *

The SS Camaro is in need of a paint job, but it's enough to do the trick. His heart races and the arteries barely open up but this time, not from pain. From pure, unfiltered excitement.

Jughead is okay, but he's not at the same time.

The sun shines through the window of the car and he knows it should be burning him, it's unnaturally hot today but he feels almost nothing at all. Crashing waves is what he feels in the tightness of his chest and freefalling right in the pit of his stomach. He's scared. He's worried.

He'd give up his entire life just for this.

Veronica is two minutes late but the way her hair sways with her brisk walk and her suitcase rolling behind her, he can see that those two minutes was part of his time well spent. She was here, and every step on the pavement as she walks to the car feels like they sprout sunflowers from the concrete and her smile is rooting itself in his veins. Just seeing her is completing him. He revs the engine, she opens up.

They look at each other; Jughead lets Veronica peer directly into his soul and at one point, he feels her inside of him. She shuts the heavy door, it makes her flinch but she takes a deep breath, steadies herself, closes her eyes. Inhales.

He turns on the indicator to signal out of the street but before he moves, he kisses her cheek. "I love you, Veronica Lodge.”

Veronica smiles like the sun in the middle of Summer, burning him, charred skin. "I love you too, Jughead," she breathes. "Let's go."

"Where to?"

"Our new home," she laughs. "New York!"

Jughead remembers how he got here in the first place.

_ Love _.

She got to feel him today. Truly feel him. He’s all enveloped love. She turns on the radio as they drive out of the town with Pep!


End file.
